NaNo meme that I'm doing instead of my Brit Lit midterm

[splinteredstar]

Stolen gleefully from speaky_bean .

 

Working Title:  Hahahahaha. Titles? Me?  It’s vaguely referred to as “That Immortality thing”. I don’t know. I don’t use titles except to keep things straight for others. I know which story is which, so I don’t need to name them until I throw them at others. 
Genre:  Paranormal, possibly horror.
Projected Word Count:  Well, nano, so at least 50k. Past that, fuck knows. I don’t even know half the story yet.

AT THE START DO YOU:
Have an outline?  No. As a general rule I don’t outline more than the next couple of scenes from where I’m at, if that. I’ve learned, painfully, that if I try to plan everything out in advance I get bogged down in details and freak out because I usually don’t *know* what happens next until I actually write it. Which, since I’m bogged down in details, I never actually get around to doing. Plus, when I outline, I feel like I’m committing myself to a plot that might not work out.  Which makes me feel bad when I deviate to something that *does* work.
Scene-by-scene?  What little outlining I do prepare, generally is on the scene level. Anything less precise is useless to me.
Know how it starts? …sort of? Maybe? I think it’s going to be Tobias (my lead) watching the news and deciding to investigate the forest where something unusual has happened.
Know how it ends?  Tobias is going to die. I’m not sure the exact manner of this, but him dying is kind of inevitable.
Have your climax in order?  Hahahahahaha. NO.
Know your main characters yet? Most of them, I think, though I feel like I’m missing a few.  I know the supernatural forces at play, but I’m missing some of the mortal cast.

IS YOUR WORK GOING TO BE:
Funny?  Not intentionally.
Serious?  Yep.
Sad? Probably to some extent.
Semi-Autobiographical? Na, not really. No more than how my main characters tend to be expressions of bits of my personality.
Based on another story? …eh, kind of. It’s based off an urban legend I heard.  So I guess so?

HOW MUCH HAVE YOU PLANNED? HAVE YOU USED:
A paper journal? Scrawled notes, if they count.
Multicolored pens? …no more than I do by randomly switching writing implements.
A computer? Yes. Lots of rambling at people…mostly saint_archie , who has been utterly invaluable. As usual.
Index cards? Fuck no. Hate using index cards.
Bulleted lists? Occasionally. Not a lot though.
Plot Charts? Hah, no.
Character Charts? Nope.
Character formulas? …what?

Favorite writing resource? Arch. Google. My brain.

ODDS AND ENDS:
A line you would like to use:  Haven’t thought ahead that far. Don’t want to write anything down before November.
A scene you would like to include:  …well, it’s not going to make a whole lot of sense out of context. But I’ll try anyway. Tobias is given the option to pursue immortality, which involves killing people. He meets an old man who was given the same option but decided to not pursue it, and Tobias will have to justify himself.
A concept you would like to explore:  The connection between memory and personality, and whether emotional connections and morals survive amnesias.
A cliché you would like to avoid: Trying to avoid the concept of death as a skeleton with a scythe….and immortality via vampirism. (Fuck you Twilight, I’m not going there.)  
A character you would like to use:  Beside my mains? There’s going to be a couple of side characters whose stories are woven in and out. One of whom is the old guy in the scene above.

FORWARD THINKING:
Do you expect to be able to complete it? Probably. Depends on how much of it is in the first 50k.
Do you intend to complete it? Not thinking of that. That’s pressure I don’t need, and pressure that’ll fuck up my process. (Writers are weird, in a variety of interesting ways.)
Would you ever try to publish it? Eh, maybe.
What do you expect to get out of this month of frantic writing? A series of headaches and a draft I’ll probably hate. But a draft that I, eventually, will be able to do something with, a draft I’ll be able to fix. If nothing else I’ll find out a lot about the story.